• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, January 6, 2014

We’re almost a week into 2014, and people are probably tired of reading about predictions for the year ahead (they were some of the only things you could read about as the industry plodded its way through the holidays), but there are some topics that are fun to envisage regardless of what month it is.

The role of advertising technology in video is one of them.

Traditional TV ad-buying is the most tried and true of strategies, but as digital advertising (and its tech) matures, even traditional TV is being forced to acknowledge programmatic buying. It might only be happening on a small scale, but for now that’s not a big deal. Everything has to start somewhere.

That’s why looking to the future of the ad technology-video advertising combination is so interesting to me; it has the potential to reinvent the oldest trick in the book.

Scott Ferber, CEO and chairman of Videology, agrees. Obviously, it’s in Ferber’s best interest to agree, but he has reason to.

Citing the new gaming systems in Xbox One and PS4 -- which should really just be called entertainment systems -- and the recent heavy promotion of tablets, Ferber thinks “the tipping point for cross-screen planning will likely occur in 2014, as more agencies combine their television and digital video buying groups.” He also thinks “more linear television content will become accessible to agency trading desks.”

Ferber also thinks media companies will more fully embrace automated ad technologies. However, he does admit that “not all the practices from the television era, or even from the prior digital era, will translate in the new video era.”

Which of those practices do translate into “the new video era” is something I’m looking forward to discovering this year. One possibility is that “programmatic direct” technologies could be used more for video campaigns, especially ones that are cross-platform (mobile, online, tablet, TV). That might help ease some of the control concerns media owners have when it comes to going the programmatic route -- especially for more valuable inventory, like video.